THE NEW YORKER had to undo her concern with his presence. Con- cern with his presence was -more than his actual presence-his job ordinari- ly; it was how he made his living. This was the hard- est thing about being sher- iff: you could not go off duty. A city cop could. They even provided locker rooms and showers for them; and he imagined laundry and dry-cleaning takeout services for the uni- forms. But a sheriff was the sheriff, and he was always, always up to something. That is why he had had to talk like a fool to this wom- an to get her to let him watch her fire with her. How else excuse standing in front of five burning acres and saying "on fire"? But it had not worked. And this man thing. "Mizz Shoop, I just-" "It's Schuping," Mrs. Schuping said. "Yes'm. I know. I just like to call you Shoop, though." With this the sheriff again squared off, with a sigh, to watch the fire, whatever he had been about to say cut off by Mrs. Schuping's correcting him. He hoped he had begun the disman- tling of her concerns with his presence, both legal and sexuaL He was aware that he had not done much toward either end, but he did not want to babble while watching a good fire. Unless she asked him off the property, he'd hold his ground. Mrs. Schuping was content, having posted her nolo contendere on the fire and her no desire on the man, to let him stand there and breathe and creak if he wanted to. She had been a little hard on the sheriff, she thought. It was the legal part that worried her into overstating the sexual part. Not overstating, misstating: she did not need a man, but wanting was another question. And if all you had to do to get a big creaking booger like this one was set your back yard on fire, she was all for it. F OUR months later the sheriff and Mrs. Schuping had their second date. He saw the smoke from the inter- . . state, where he was parked behind the Starvin' Marvin billboard at such a ridiculous pitch that takeoff was nearly vertical and he resisted blasting off for speeders unless provoked entirely. What had been provoking him entirely lately was college kids with their feet out the windows of BMW s, headed for Dade County, Florida, with their socks on. That was making him strike, lift- off or no lift-off. He wondered what it was like for a bass. How some lures got by and some did not. For him it was pink socks. In the absence of pink socks, there was smoke over the Fork Swamp. Mrs. Schuping looked even more fire-lovely than she had at the first fire. This time she saw him before he spoke. "There won't be a problem with the permit," the sheriff said, instead of the idiocies of last time. There was no problem with the permit because there was no permit, but he thought this was a good way to address those concerns of hers. The sheriff had lost a little weight. Mrs. Schuping had been on intellectual winnowing excursions, and she saw as a matter of vector analogy the trajecto- ry of the sheriff toward her and the swale of her sexual self. He had a swag or a sway-something-of gut that suggested, even if a bit cartoonishly, a lion. This big fat tub could get on top of her, she thought, with no identifiable emotion, looking at the crisp, shriek- ing, blistering fire she had set with no 27 'I DOM 'dlEN , . ....ð-p. , EtACT CHAN&f.. ONLY.. 2ifb tz-f( more ado than a Bic lighter jammed open and a pot she didn't want anymore full of gasoline. The sheriff took a slow survey of the fire, which was magnificent, and loyal -her little swamp was neatly set on a for k of creeks so that the fire could not get away-and turning back he caught a glance of Mrs. Schuping's profile as she watched the fire and, he thought, him a little, and down a bit he saw her breasts, rather sticking out and firm- looking in the dusky, motley, scrabbled light. Bound up in a sweater and what looked like a salmon-colored bra, through the swamp smoke stinging your eyes, on a forty-year-old woman they could take your breath away. He made to go. "Good coo] fire, Mizz Shoop," the sheriff said. "I've got to go." "You're leaving, sheriff?" "It's business, purely business." To the sheriff she seemed relaxed, legally, and there is nothing like a big Ford pawhoooorn exit-a little air, a li ttle air and a little time. M RS. SCHUPING had been through every consciousness and semi- consciousness and unconsciousness and raised - and lowered -consciousness pro- gram contributing to every good con- science and bad conscience and middle struggling conscience there is. But now she was a woman in a house so falling apart that the children had taken it off the haunted register, and she was boil-